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These two articles by Kelvin Smythe have
rattled a few cages in New Zealand:

For goodness
sake let’s get computer use in perspective

“No matter how
sophisticated the current understanding of computers and school education,
no-one can sensibly predict the various directions computer use in education
will take.What we

should know, and we should hold on to as something real and
solid amidst the ephemeral and flux, is that the fundamentals of children’s
learning – if purposes are humanistic and democratic – remain substantially the
same.”

A response to
the criticism of my criticism of the school that saw art as a distraction to
computer work

“The promise
was that computers would be tools, but now rooms are being built for those
tools, indeed, whole schools, to devastating effect; computers have become
central, and programmes, rooms and schools are being built around them.”

For and
against computers in schools - Kelvin Smythe inspires an important debate.

“I have to
agree with Kelvin that the ‘heart, vivacity and substance of curriculum areas’ are
all too often missing in classrooms replaced by an emphasis on technology. It
does seem to me that some teachers are captured by technology and, if this is
the case, such technology is itself a distraction from real learning.”

“Roughly one
in four children in the United States lives in a home without a computer or
Internet access, and this digital divide is often cited as a factor in the
intractable achievement gap between poor students and their well-off peers.
Give these kids a computer, the logic goes, and you may increase their chances
of succeeding in school. Entire philanthropies are built on this idea. But a
jarring new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper concludes
that all of this hardware may have no effect, at least in the short term, on
educational outcomes.”

campaign. A major one is that the "core"
curriculum in place since 1893 is a solid foundation for instruction and
testing. Below, I explain why I disagree, and in the last sentence provide a
link to others' perception of the problem.”

“Scientists have found that current school and university start
times are damaging the learning and health of students. Drawing on the latest
sleep research, the authors conclude students start times should be 8:30 or
later at age 10; 10:00 or later at 16; and 11:00 or later at 18. Implementing
these start times should protect students from short sleep duration and chronic
sleep deprivation, which are linked to poor learning and health problems.”

There are few
things more aggravating to parents than a kid who “doesn’t try.” Whether it’s
math homework, dance class or those guitar lessons they begged for but now
never practice, we want our children to be eager learners who embrace effort,
relish challenges and understand the value of persistence. Too often, what we
see instead is foot-dragging avoidance and whiny complaints of “This is boring!”

“Bridging the
gap between popular neuromyths and the scientific insights gathered in the past
few

decades is a growing challenge. As modern brain-imaging techniques, such as
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have advanced scientific
knowledge, these misleading lay interpretations by business practitioners have
advanced as well. Unless such misconceptions are eliminated, they will continue
to undermine both personal- and organizational-learning efforts.”

I thought I’d
posted this article by Marion Brady before but apparently not.

“Delivering
information isn’t the problem. Kids are drowning in information, and oceans
more of it is at their fingertips ready to be downloaded. What they need that
traditional schooling has never

given them and isn’t giving them now isn’t
information, but information processing skills. They need to know how to
think—how to select, sort, organize, evaluate, relate, and integrate
information to turn it into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom.”

When Did 19th
Century Learning Become So Trendy? (8 Old Ideas That Are Actually Pretty Innovative)

“People mocked
non-techie projects and now it's "we really need hands-on Maker
Spaces." Five years ago, I watched techies on Twitter saying, "Note
taking is dumb when you can just Google it." Now everyone is posting about
the power of sketch-noting. Suddenly mural projects and theater productions are
okay again, since we added an A into STEM; or as I like to call it
"MEATS." I want a MEATS Lab. Maybe it's time we abandon the idea that
certain education practices are outdated and realize that learning is timeless
and sometimes some of the best ideas are buried under the industrial carpet of
factory schools.”

“…if we want all students to realise
their full potential ( usually written into every school's

charter) then their
individual talents and styles need to be recognised. A standardized system 'one
size fits all' does not fit anyone. All too often school failures are students
whose learning styles have been ignored or neglected.”

I was motivated to read the information on the school
website and to view all the class blogs to see for myself.
I have also had the occasion to drive past the school the past year and have
often thought what a wonderful environment Tairua is for the children to
explore – with or without the use

of technology.

It would seem to me that technology is being seen by
most/many schools as the ‘silver bullet’ essential to ensuring success for
students in the future – so called ‘future proofing’ .

There are a number of phrases I agree with in the
Stuff article about the school but I don’t see technology as ‘centre stage’. It is, if used
properly, a powerful tool for students to deepen their learning; conversely it
is all too easy for the use of such technology for shallow learning. I don’t
think students being ‘plugged in’ any guarantee of real learning. Students these
days are 'plugged i almost all their waking time; the virtual world is taking
over from the real.

The success with using technology is the interpretation of
Tairua’s phrase - a ‘genuine process of discovery’. I wasn’t able, looking
through the class blogs to ascertain this. I would need to visit and read /view
what the students have produced.

When I visit classrooms I like to read some of the inquiry
learning research on show. Ideally the classroom walls (and individual student
work) should replicate the in depth thinking seen in the best of Science Fair
exhibits. In such research the challenge, or research questions should be on
display, the process of inquiry obvious
and the findings made clear and often
include further things to explore from unanswered questions arising
throughout the study - all knowledge is tentative. And for all this learning to
be assisted by the use of technology.

I am usually disappointed. Cutting and pasting – learning
via Google is more often the case.

Student research, if it is genuine, ought to
feature markers such as ‘I used to think’,’ I now think’,’ I am still confused
about this’ to indicate the changing of students’ minds as they ‘construct’
their own knowledge. And ideally
students need to be able to defend their conclusions and teachers need to
challenge students to do so. This is beyond ‘facilitation’.

I have no idea if this is the case at Tairua.

As for the comment that Tairua has removed art from classroom environments because it 'distracts ' students I have mixed feelings. An attractive room environment featuring current
research/inquiry studies and students ideas expressed through art and language is vital. Some call the room environment the ‘fourth
teacher’ (after the teacher, the material to be learnt, and the ideas of other
within the classroom and online).

A teacher’s classroom is an important
‘message system’. If it is full of teacher distractions, posters etc it is
the teacher’s class. If it is full of well displayed inquiry, language and art
work , all featuring the students identity and ‘voice’, then such an
environment is not a distraction, it is a celebration of student thinking

I have to agree with Kelvin that the ‘heart, vivacity and
substance of curriculum areas’ are all too often missing in classrooms replaced by an emphasis on technology.

It does seem to me that some teachers are captured by
technology and, if this is the case, such technology is itself a distraction
from real learning.

A futurist has stated in a world when students are connected
almost every minute of their waking hours that now the ‘offline is the new luxury’ and
that humanistic schools should cultivate the offline – the real world almost as
an antidote to be ‘plugged in’ all the time.

Any new technology has both positive and negative
consequences - the most obvious example atomic power. Even the humble book, as a result of the printing press, allowed ideas to spread but caused the loss of oral language and story telling. As Sophocles wrote, ‘Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without
a curse’.What does it mean to be human
in an increasingly digital world? What might be lost?

Einstein has written, ‘Imagination is more
important than knowledge’ and it is imagination that is at stake our education
system today. We must be careful not to throw out creativity with our obsession
with technology. We need to protect at all costs a humanistic education – the
holistic Kelvin believes so strongly in.

We must be suspicious of people who look to technology as
the solution to everything.

We must fight against the standardised teaching that
computer power is introducing into our schools.

We must be careful not to be
captured by those selling ‘Silicon Valley snake oil’. Technology is a tool, a
powerful one, and one all the more dangerous if used unquestionably.

This holistic learning has all but been lost - not helped by the introduction of National Standards, the continuing use of demeaning ability grouping and formulaic 'nest practices'. This emphasis on standarisation is not providing the necessary personalisation required to 'future proof' students.

A school ought to be community of scientists and artists, as in Elwyn's school, with students exploring their immediate world and the wider world students’ now have access
to.

What does it mean to be human in a digital world? Maybe ‘offline is now the new luxury’?

Maybe this
is the really important question.

The comments to Kelvin's critique about the use of computers show this is an issue worth debating.

“The widening education gap between the rich and the poor is not
news to those who work in education, many of whom have been struggling to close
the gap beginning the day poor children enter kindergarten or preschool. But
one unlikely soldier has joined the fight: a pediatric surgeon who wants to get
started way before kindergarten. She wants to start closing the gap the day
babies are born.”

“I see scientific literacy as a set of basic rules about how
the world works, a student can apply to a novel situation in order to derive
insights, make predictions and better decisions. The

‘Martian’, although
he had never grown potatoes before, now had to do so in an alien environment.
His understanding of these basic rules (e.g. manure contains valuable
nutrients, plants need earth-like atmospheric pressure, water can be extracted
from the air) allowed him to plan his survival. Most of these basic rules are
not confined to a single discipline, but span across.”

Is Anybody
Listening? Research finds no advantage in learning to read from age five

“A University
of Otago researcher has uncovered for the first time quantitative evidence that
teaching children to read from age five is not likely to make that child any
more successful at reading than a child who learns reading later, from age
seven.”

Teachers will
always need to use their knowledge of students and content to make professional
judgments about classroom practice. However, we believe the art of teaching
should also be informed by a robust understanding of the learning sciences so
that teachers can align their decisions with our profession's best
understanding of how students learn.

It's that
schools were designed to crank out future workers at a time when the Industrial
Revolution was in high gear. Most of us don't realize that our education system
hasn't really changed since then, when it was designed to crank out factory
workers. The whole goal was get people ready for repetition, routine, and
defined tasks. Factory education, if you will.”

“Institutions
of higher education are under pressure from students and employers to prove
that graduates are gaining the cross-cutting skills — such as critical
thinking, problem-solving, communication and quantitative analysis — necessary
for success in the real world. Now, a consortium of 59 universities and
community colleges in nine states is working to develop a rubric-based
assessment system that would allow them to measure these crucial skills within
ongoing coursework that students produce.”

This is the
ultimate responsibility of education – one that all too often not realised and
one that underpins the philosophy of creative teachers..

Rachel Carson

“Esteemed
biologist Rachael Carson once stated , ‘If a child is to keep their inborn
sense of wonder alive he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can
share it, rediscovering with him the joy, mystery and excitement of the world
around him.’”

“The way in
which certain instructional trends—education buzzwords like “collaborative
learning” and “project-based learning” and “flipped classrooms”—are
applied often neglect the needs of introverts.”

“Almost every
child on the first day he sets foot in a school building, is smarter, more
curious, less afraid of what he doesn't know, better at finding and figuring
things out, more confident, resourceful, persistent and independent than he
will ever be again in his schooling – or, unless he is very unusual and very
lucky, for the rest of his life. Already, by paying close attention to and
interacting with the world and people around him, and without any school-type
formal instruc­tion, he has done a task far more difficult, complicated and
abstract than anything he will be asked to do in school, or than any of his
teachers has done for years.”

Education at a crossroad - while many
teachers seem confused in educational no mans' land

“There is a battle being fought for the
minds of our future citizens between those who see

education as a means to
achieve narrow political or economic ends and those who see education as
developing the full potential, or gifts and talents, of all students. In
the centre of this battle are teachers distracted by defending the status quo.”

“It seems strange to think of one of
natures most simplistic animals as metaphor for an organizational model for the
future but the amoeba is a good choice, as it has survived almost as long as
life has been on the planet.”

Peggy Burrows, highly regarded principal of
Rangiora High School, has been victimised in what seems to be a Ministry of
Education hatchet job. Kelvin Smythe has taken up his keyboard to write the
following two articles exposing this travesty. A very active Facebook page has
also been set up to fight for justice for Peggy.

Another huge bureaucraticinjustice

“It
is another case of the education bureaucracy listening to the wrong people;
believing them to be the worth listening to because, it seems, they want to
believe teaching professionals aren’t. The
government and education bureaucrats are doing inhumane things to professional
educators as an expression, it is suggested, of a kind of perverted education
policy.”

You are urged to sign the petition to support Peggy Burrows,
principal, Rangiora HighSchool

“From
the response to an earlier posting by two people supporting the intervention
two worrying but not uncommon themes made an appearance: anti-women (not
capable of handling complex finances) and Peggy being too pro-Maori…”

How to Master the Art of “Effective Surprise” and the 6 Essential Conditions for
Creativity

The great Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner had
his 100th birthday last week. Here’s
a Brainpickings article that discusses his thinking about creativity.

Happy 100th

“There
is something antic about creating, although the enterprise be serious. And
there is a matching antic spirit that goes with writing about it, for if ever
there was a silent process, it is the creative one. Antic and serious and
silent. Yet there is good reason to inquire about creativity, a reason beyond
practicality, for practicality is not a reason but a justification after the
fact. The reason is the ancient search of the humanist for the excellence of
man: the next creative act may bring man to a new dignity.”

Happy 100th Birthday, Jerome Bruner: The Pioneering Psychologist on
the Act of Discovery and the Key to True Learning

“Discovery
… is in its essence a matter of rearranging or transforming evidence
in such a way that one is enabled to go beyond the evidence so reassembled to
new insights. It may well be that an additional fact or shred of evidence makes
this larger transformation possible. But it is often not even dependent on new
information.

“In
the debate over school autonomy, what frequently gets lost is that school
autonomy is different from teacher autonomy and that it is teacher autonomy
that is the more important factor for classroom learning. Teacher autonomy
means collective professional autonomy.”

“Watching a father read to his child
sends a very strong message that he is interested in spending time with his
child and engages his child in one of the most rewarding and beneficial
activities for children's development.”

“The word “joy”caught me off guard—I’m certainly not used to hearing the
word in conversations about education in America, where I received my training
and taught for several years. But Holappa, detecting my surprise, reiterated
that the country’s early-childhood education program
indeed places a heavy emphasis on “joy,”which along with play is explicitly
written into the curriculum as a learning concept.”

Science
Shows Something Surprising About People Who Still Read Fiction

Many
so-called ‘reformers’have
downgraded fiction and instead set standards for reading non-fiction books, on
the basis that these will be more ‘use’to
children as they enter the workforce….

“Researchers calculated emotional
transportation by having participants express how astory they read affected them emotionally
ona five-point scale —for example, how the main character's
success made them feel, and how sorry they felt for the characters.

In thestudy, empathy was only apparent in
the groups of people who read fictionand who were emotionally transported.
Meanwhile, those who were not transported demonstrated a decrease in empathy.”

“Educational psychology has focused on
the concepts of learned helplessness and more currently growth-fixed mindsets
as a way to explain how and why students give up in the classroom setting.These ideas can also be applied to
educators in this day of forced standardization, testing, scripted curriculum,
and school initiatives.”

“In a classroom, or within any group of
learners, the reality is that each individual has a different learning experience,
even while they all are instructed the same way. Fascinating, isn't it? We all
bring into the learning situation our own learning history and cultural
background, our life-long, life-wide and life-deep understanding what learning
is. What we all need is support for our individual development, and empowering
learning facilitation that helps us to learn even more.”

“In his final article for Scientific American, in 1998, Mr.
Gardner lamented the “glacial”progress resulting from his efforts to
have recreational math introduced into school curriculums “as a way to

interest young students in the wonders of
mathematics.”Indeed, a paper this year in the
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics points out that recreational math can be used
to awaken mathematics-related “joy,”“satisfaction,”“excitement”and
“curiosity”in students, which the educational
policies of several countries (including China, India, Finland, Sweden,
England, Singapore and Japan) call for in writing.”

“New jobs are being created all the time. For educators,
this means equipping students with the skills they need to learn and adapt to a
changing world. Lifelong learning skills are hard to measure, so we have to use
proxies.”

“Over my 10 years in teaching, I have seen eccentric
colleagues pushed, blinking and disorientated, into a new world of lesson
observations, targets, data and appraisals. There are undoubtedly those who, as
well as being eccentric, are rather lazy and probably not up to the job. But
the problem is that many of these mavericks, who wouldn’t recognise a lesson plan if it bit them on the behind and
couldn’t care less about student data or targets, are brilliant.”

'An education in the arts is limited to the economically
privileged. It is an unjust waste of national talent’

This is so true.

“A good education should be a preparation for life. It
requires the development of the whole child, not merely their intellect. It
necessitates students becoming intrinsic learners with self-discipline and a
genuine thirst for knowledge, rather than being goaded or corralled, which is
what students may become with a single-minded focus on exam results. The value
of arts and culture is important for all students.”

There's no better feeling that seeing
design concepts and sketches come to life before your eyes.This is an idea schools could make use
of? Real personalisedportfolios of students’
ideas.

“I believe that the process of a project is just as
important as the final product; it shows a journey and a connection between an
initial idea and the physical design it ends up becoming. It's a transformation
and a visual representation of the ability to do none other than create. The
design process is a beautiful thing, and it's always been something that I've
prided myself on in my work.”

“Focused school visits are a powerful means to gain
professional development and, in particular, to gain insights in to what other
schools/teachers feel important. This is all the more necessary as schools are
increasingly under pressure to distort their teaching programmes by the need to
respond to the reactionary and politically inspired introduction of National
Standards.”

“The following is a simple but powerful process to 'tap the
wisdom' of all involved but one that demands shared leadership, particularly by
key people in the school –and
of course total commitment by the principal. All involved must see the benefit
of developing such a vision and be determined to see that it is reflected in
the: values the school believes in (as seen by behaviours of students, teachers
and parents); and the agreed teaching beliefs of the school.”